Exercise may undo heart damage

Daily exercise appears to help reverse some of the effects of heart failure, increasing the growth of new muscle cells and blood vessels that are often impaired in heart patients.

Congestive heart failure is a chronic condition in which the heart fails to pump blood efficiently to the body’s organs. It can be caused by a number of things including clogged arteries, heart attack and high blood pressure.

Dr. Axel Linke of the University of Leipzig in Germany looked at the effects of exercise on heart failure in two different studies.

In one, his team tested whether exercise training could activate progenitor cells, a type of immature cell that makes cells needed for muscle repair. The study involved 50 men with moderate to severe heart failure who had about half the normal number of progenitor cells in their muscles. Half of this group rode a stationary bicycle for a total of 30 minutes per day, while the other half remained relatively inactive.

At the end of six months, the inactive group saw no increase in the number of progenitor cells, but the exercise group had a 166% increase. The researchers also found a six-fold increase in the formation of muscle-repairing cells.

He saw a similar effect in a small study of progenitor cells that make blood vessels.